The present invention is directed to an inexpensive way to augment the cooling of electronic components mounted on a printed wiring board.
Electronic systems have become increasingly more complex requiring multiple circuit board assemblies which may be interconnected among themselves or connected to other subsystems through cables and the like, or connected to a so-called "mother board." Because of decreasing size constraints, the chassis for enclosing a plurality of printed wiring boards has limited heat transfer by convection due to reduced air space available. Further, some applications require isolation from the environment, or the absence of air (space applications), therefore use of outside air to assist in heat transfer is not available.
Although particular components may have heat sinks attached thereto to enhance the heat transfer to the air space within the enclosure, these heat sinks generally are large, and thereby would require a greater interspacing between printed wiring boards to accommodate the size of the heat sink structure for the particular components. Further, with absence of air in some applications, heat sinks attached to the components are not effective.
One technique for dissipating heat from the electronic components is the employment of multi-layered printed wiring boards including metal layers sandwiched between the non conductive layer and the printed wiring layer.
However, such multi-layered boards are expensive and impose further limitations on manufacturing and assembly operations, and requires added weight.